AIX

Hi

My Unix sever is AIX 5.3. My Login shell ( using echo $SHELL) is /bin/sh implying it is a Bourne Shell. My Question is that i am still able to use Alias command to create/retrieve aliases. I have read in several sites on Unix online that the Bourne Shell does not support Aliases but only Shell functions. So what am i missing here?Is there a way to explain this discrepancy?


Thanks ,

/bin/sh for POSIX compliant UNIX systems must support aliases - because the POSIX standards require it.

/bin/sh is a POSIX shell, even if it has Bourne shell roots.

Thanks Jim . How does find out that a given shell is POSIX compliant? Thanks.

Humm, on 5.3 /usr/bin/sh is the default shell and is a link to the Korn Shell. Check that /bin/sh is not also a link to the Korn Shell.

Thanks Murphy. How do i check this linking of /bin/sh to Korn Shell. I am new to Unix .Is there a command to do so? Thanks.

Code:

ls -l /bin/sh

you will see something like this at the end of the line: -> /usr/bin/ksh
the "->" tells you the name of the file the link points to.

most file have something that looks like this: -rwxr-xr-x at the begining of the line output by ls -l. Directories look like drwxr-xr-x links: lrwxrwxr-x. The first character tells you if it is a special type of file, not just a regular file.

Thanks Jim. I found out that on my Unix AIX 5.3 the /bin is linked to /usr/bin so i did the following :

ls -l /usr/bin/sh and i got the following.

-r-xr-xr-x 5 bin bin 290006 Jul 18 2010 /usr/bin/sh

But this still does not show the linking to ksh .So where can i find it?

Thanks,